


and we're not out of the tunnel (but i bet you though there's an end)

by passionslipsaway



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abandonment, Dryad!Eurydice, F/M, Nobody Dies because I said so, Post-Canon Fix-It, Tenderness, and make out some, really they just talk about their feelings and cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 05:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20076802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/passionslipsaway/pseuds/passionslipsaway
Summary: Orpheus and Eurydice are soon to be married, but they realize some things have gone unsaid between them, especially when it comes to their pasts.





	and we're not out of the tunnel (but i bet you though there's an end)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "I Will" by Mitski

Eurydice squinted into the midmorning sun. It was early spring, and the sun, moon, and stars had yet to fully adjust to the world as it was now, set aright by a song and the timely arrival of the goddess Persephone. Several weeks had passed since she and Orpheus returned from Hadestown, having set the world back into tune, and the lovers, like many, were trying to become acquainted with their new lives. The arrival of transitory seasons meant different things for everyone, but for Orpheus and Eurydice, it mostly meant relief. Relief that they’d made it out of the Underworld, relief that they were both alive at all, relief that they were together. 

They had yet to fully discuss the gravity of everything that had happened, preferring to spend their time alone merely holding each other close and reveling in the miracle that was their escape. In that time, they had agreed to formally marry, as soon as their finances allowed for a ceremony, and spent the days doing what was necessary to save up. Orpheus worked double shifts at the bar, bussing tables during the day and singing for patrons well into the night. Eurydice pulled her weight, too, picking up the bartending shifts Orpheus couldn’t, as Hermes had so graciously let her, and haggling for food at the market. She may also have acquired a habit of slipping loose fruits and vegetables into the deep pockets of her coat to save money on groceries—not that she’d ever tell Orpheus that. Today, however, the lovers had been cast out of the bar for what Hermes called, a “well-deserved day off.” They had chosen to leave the one-room cabin they called home to venture out into the softer temperatures of springtime, which neither could remember experiencing at any great length before.

After some wandering, they had chosen a spot in the forest several hours’ walking distance from their town, underneath a canopy of towering trees. Eurydice spread out the blanket she had been carrying in her knapsack for them both while Orpheus laid his lyre alongside a basket of fruit and bread that they had brought with them. Times were still tough, yes, but they were no longer so tough that they couldn’t afford to eat.

“Wow, this is beautiful,” Orpheus breathed, sitting down and craning his neck upwards to fully take in the forest above them. Splotches of sunlight dotted his face. “I wonder what kind of trees these are.”

“They’re river birches.” Eurydice responded, taking a spot beside him and crossing her legs.

“They are?” Orpheus asked. He rarely doubted his lover—now fiancée—on anything, but he hadn’t expected her to be well-versed on the species of flora so far from their town.

“Yes, they are,” Eurydice said, “I should know, I lived in one for the first seven years of my life.” Orpheus looked at her, confused. She elaborated. “They’re common homes… for dryads.”

“You come from dryads?” Orpheus was genuinely surprised.

She nodded, “On my mother’s side.”

Orpheus raised his eyebrows, “I didn’t know that.” Dryads were part of the bands of nymphs that lived exclusively in the forests. They tended to avoid cities, towns, and people altogether. In that way, it made sense that Eurydice was all alone when she arrived, though Orpheus had assumed she was merely a wanderer. On the other hand, dryads were typically a tight-knit group—he wondered why she was separated from the rest of them.

Eurydice was suddenly thoughtful. “I guess we never talked much about our families.”

_Maybe we should have_, she thought to herself. Soon, she would call Orpheus her husband. That was a decision she had made months ago, when she barely knew him, and she stood by it, but she couldn’t deny the fact that despite all they had been through, they still knew little about each other. She felt a pang in her chest, remembering the weeks before she left for Hadestown, when he was so wrapped up in his song and she was trying to scrape together enough food to survive that they all but stopped speaking to each other. If they’d only talked…

“Hmm. If I recall, our mouths were busy with other things.” Orpheus smirked, and Eurydice shoved his shoulder almost too hard to be playful. He made a hurt noise, and she looked at him apologetically, but was still clearly not taking this lightly.

“I’m serious, Orpheus. We have time now and we’ll be married in a matter of weeks. I wanna know you as more than just a lover or the poet that brought springtime back. And...” The next few words were difficult for her, but she had to say them if she wanted this to go anywhere. “I want you to know me, too.”

Orpheus knew there was a lot about herself that Eurydice hadn’t told him. He always figured she was just private, that she’d come around if he gave her time, and he supposed that was what was happening now—but what if they hadn’t made it out of the Underworld? Eurydice wouldn’t even be here, and she certainly wouldn’t be opening up her very guarded heart to him. All of her innermost thoughts, all of her secrets, all of the memories that made her who she was, would have been lost to him forever. At the thought of that, Orpheus’ stomach churned.

“Okay,” he said, willing to take this seriously. He reached out and took Eurydice’s hand in his own, examining the simple metal band on her finger that was serving as an engagement ring for the time being. It had already occurred to him they probably would never be able to afford anything fancier. “Where should we start?”

Eurydice considered beginning with her family, but she quickly discarded the idea. She wasn’t ready. Maybe she would be later, but… not yet. “Can... can you go first?” She looked up at her poet. “Tell me about growing up at the bar, with Hermes.”

Orpheus smiled fondly. “Well, he wasn’t the most affectionate, that’s for sure—"

“—Brother, _that’s_ a fact,” both lovers said at the same time, mimicking one of Hermes’ common expressions. They laughed and some of the tension eased out of the conversation.

Orpheus continued, playing with Eurydice’s fingers as he talked. “A bar is an interesting place for someone to spend their childhood. You see almost every kind of person, you see a lot of things you probably shouldn’t, and you see a lot of things you don’t understand, too. Things you don’t understand until you’re older, anyway.”

Eurydice didn’t say anything to interrupt him, content just to listen.

“The best times were when Lady Persephone came to visit. We didn’t have spring then, of course, but there was summer, and her parties. I probably shouldn’t have been there, as a child, but they liked to hear me play. I was gonna put the bar’s band out of business one day, Hermes used to say. The band didn’t like that much.”

Eurydice snorted, thinking of the musicians, whom she knew now by name, being forced out of the bar by a small Orpheus with a lyre almost too big for him. She briefly wondered what he looked like as a child and made a note to ask Hermes if any pictures of him from back then existed.

Curious, Eurydice asked, “How did you end up with Hermes? Wasn’t your mother a muse?”

At that, Orpheus felt his chest tighten, and he visibly stiffened. “She was. She was a friend of his.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Eurydice hesitated, then ventured, “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” Orpheus responded, almost too quickly. Eurydice wasn’t one to judge; families were difficult and talking about them was even worse. Still, it was concerning to see her guileless poet suddenly so guarded, “I was too young to remember what she said to me about… about leaving.” He shrugged. “Honestly, she might not have said anything at all. And Mr. Hermes would never tell me for certain, either. One day I was with her, and the next...” He bit his lip. “I was living at the bar.”

Eurydice hadn’t seen Orpheus visibly upset since he sang to the workers in Hadestown. For once, she couldn’t read his expression; he wasn’t angry, but he didn’t seem sad either. Distant, maybe.

“It’s not hard to figure out why she left, though, even if I don’t know what happened to her after.” He was staring hard at a patch of grass a few feet away, squeezing her fingers too tightly without realizing it. “Times were hard, you know. Even then. Like you, I didn’t have a father—not that I knew of, anyways.” His shoulder twitched abruptly, and he jerked his head away from her. “Being a muse doesn’t pay much, and you have to travel all the time. A child is just... it becomes a burden.”

It was quiet for a moment. Eurydice didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t known this, that he was abandoned by his mother. Thankfully, Orpheus kept talking, though his voice cracked slightly as he spoke. “I think Mr. Hermes didn’t want to upset me.” He gave a short laugh. “Upset me any more than I already was, I mean. From what Mr. Hermes says, I…” He blinked rapidly and flicked his eyes to the ground. “I guess I didn’t handle it well, her leaving. I didn’t understand what was happening, why I was suddenly in this loud, dark place instead of outside every day, walking in the sun, listening to my mother sing.” He swallowed, “I knew it was my fault, but I didn’t know what I’d done. I thought maybe I’d done something awful without even knowing it and scared her off, but…” His lips twitched nervously. “Um. That wasn’t it. It turns out that I didn’t do anything. I just… I was just… I wasn’t worth staying for. I didn’t… I didn’t pull my weight. I was too much work.”

“You were a child—” she started to respond, but her poet’s eyes were somewhere else; he didn’t acknowledge her.

Eurydice’s heart sank into her stomach. She realized now that Orpheus was terrified of being left behind. Abandonment was his greatest fear, and what had she done? She’d abandoned him. Left him without so much as a word. Left him behind with Mr. Hermes in the noise and the dark and without any explanation at all.

She’d known that her actions would hurt him, of course. Even as she was making her way to the train station, even as she was standing on the platform, she’d known he’d be hurt by her absence. But she had always assumed he’d move on from it, find another muse, or that she’d be back with her wages before he could wonder too hard about where she had gone. Eurydice had had no idea, none at all, how deeply this ran.

They had never talked about how her leaving for Hadestown affected him. She didn’t know what he’d done in the time in between when she boarded the train and when he came looking for her, either. All she knew was that he had blamed himself for her leaving, even though she’d told him again and again that the decision had been hers and hers alone. An image of Orpheus, confused, alone, and broken by her absence, forced its way into Eurydice’s mind.

“Orpheus—” Eurydice tried again, wanting to comfort him but having nothing to say. He was unconsciously digging the knuckles of his free hand into the blanket they sat on.

Finally, shaking himself, the poet swallowed hard and continued. “The first few months were the worst, according to Hermes.” Eurydice noted that he’d dropped the formality of Hermes’ title, though she wasn’t sure what that meant. “I gave him a pretty hard time, apparently. Not eating, crying all night.”

“‘S’good thing gods don’t need to sleep,” she mumbled, and he breathed out something like a laugh, loosening his grip on her fingers. He threaded their hands together instead.

“Anyways, eventually Mr. Hermes figured I had my mother’s talent for song, and he was right. He gave me an instrument of his own invention, a lyre, probably so I had something to do and would stop crying all the time. I was scaring the customers away, you know? Lucky for both of us, I turned out to be quite good at it.”

“This one?” She could hardly imagine a child playing the imposing instrument Orpheus had now.

“No, no, of course not,” He laughed, genuinely this time. “One fit for a child. This was a gift when I turned fifteen.” He traced the contours of the lyre.

There were a few more moments of silence. Finally, Orpheus spoke. “I’m not angry with her now, though. She did what she had to do. If times hadn’t been so hard, if Mr. Hermes had refused…” He drummed the fingers of his free hand on the blanket in an irregular staccato beat. “Who knows? Perhaps I would have been a traveling muse, too, wandering the earth.” His smile was sad, strained. Then, he turned to Eurydice, a look of absolute tenderness on his face. “But then I wouldn’t have met you. And that," he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, “I can’t fathom. I won’t.” He leaned closer, holding her gaze. “I don’t ever want to.”

She kissed him then, not wanting to even consider a world in which the two of them had never crossed paths. Their destiny, their fate, was to be together. Eurydice was sure of it.

When they broke apart, she said, “We might still have met, poet. You’d have come into the forest, charming every living thing with your song—”

“Including you,” Orpheus leaned in, playfully bumping her shoulder.

“What makes you so sure of that?” Eurydice returned, bumping him back. 

“Because you’re alive,” he said, his eyes wide and clear. 

“I am,” she breathed, thinking back to those weeks (months?) in Hadestown where she hadn’t been. Not really, anyway. “Thanks to you.” 

Suddenly, he pulled her into a crushing hug, burying his head in her shoulder. “Don’t leave me again,” he said, his voice muffled by her skin and her threadbare vest. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Eurydice’s heart clenched. “I won’t,” she soothed, stroking his hair. It was growing long again, she noticed; she’d cut it for him when they got home. “I promise.” She rubbed his back, trying to think of how to convince him that she meant it. _Oh, _she realized. This wasn’t going to be easy. She steeled herself, and then…

“My mother didn’t leave me,” she said, her voice so soft Orpheus was certain he’d only heard it on account of her mouth being nearly against his ear.

He pulled back to look at her. Eurydice continued, “Not physically, anyway. It might have been easier if she had, if she’d… I don’t know. It would have been different, at least. Maybe not better. But.” She cursed herself for always being so clumsy with words. Orpheus breathed poetry, lived it—she felt the syllables weighing in her mouth like lead. 

Orpheus squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

Her brows furrowed. “You don’t know what happened.”

“No,” he said simply, “But I can see that you’re sad. I’m sorry anything has ever made you sad.” 

She couldn’t help but smile at that. Even when he wasn’t able to fix things, he made them better. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” 

He frowned. “Sometimes old things hurt worst. Like Hephaestus’ broken bones.” 

“Stop being right,” she mock-complained, swatting his shoulder. “I hate how you’re always right.” 

He brightened at the humor in her voice. “I can help you hurt less,” he said eagerly, scooting even closer to her, so their thighs were touching. “I can write a song that—"

She laughed, missing the rest of his words. “You have to let me tell you first, you know.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Good point.” 

She felt more at ease now, better able to tell the story without showing more emotion than she wanted to. “Like I said, my mother was a dryad, and my father left when I was very young. He was human, I think. The way my mother told it, he was very attractive, but he didn’t stick around. Or she didn’t. I was never quite sure.” 

Orpheus rubbed her shoulder sympathetically, and she soldiered on. “Anyway, that meant that I was half dryad, and half dryad was… not enough dryad. Not for the _real_ dryads, anyway.” 

Orpheus frowned. “You’re just as real as anyone else,” he objected. “You count.” 

She quirked her lips up. “To anyone but a dryad, yes. It’s complicated,” she said, seeing that his expression hadn’t changed. “It’s just how it is. I never fit in, I was always too loud, or too clumsy, or too rough, or too… much.”

“Like me,” Orpheus said, his voice gentle. 

Her eyes crinkled. “I suppose so.” She sighed, thinking back to her childhood and the constant criticism she’d received. Dryads were always together, always social with each other and shy with everyone else, always clustered around her to tell her exactly how she failed to measure up. “I never got better at being a dryad, though. They were always trying to teach me, improve me, _fix _me, and I failed. Over and over. So, they gave up on me.” She reached for Orpheus’ hand, looking for support. He folded his fingers over her palm and squeezed his encouragement. 

“By the time I was eight or nine, they just ignored me. It was like I wasn’t even there. Even my own mother acted like I was invisible. It was like I was alone, only I could see everyone else being happy around me. It didn’t take me long to decide that I’d be better off actually living alone, without the constant reminder that I wasn’t enough and never would be, so I left. And I wandered. I don’t even think they realized I had gone.”

Eurydice considered telling him all that had happened to her in the meantime—begging for food, struggling for survival, doing anything she had to in order to find a place to sleep at night, but she held back. That was yet another box of memories she did not want to open, and one box a day was more than enough. Besides, it wasn’t even relevant right now. She’d tell him in time. She kept her mouth shut.

“That’s awful,” Orpheus said, running his free hand down her arm. “How could anyone ignore _you? _You’re—_”_ She bit her lip, and he blanched. “Oh, gods. I—is that what I—" His eyes widened, and he sucked in a sharp breath, pulling his hands back from hers and clenching them into fists in front of him. “Eurydice, I—words aren’t enough, I didn’t know—_wait, _no, that doesn’t make it better—I mean that should never have ignored you, and I am so sorry, I should’ve—" He grabbed her upper arms, pressing too tightly again. 

“Orpheus,” she said, calm and clear, placing her hands over his so he’d loosen his grip. “I forgive you. I hurt you, too. And I am so, _so_ sorry.” 

Tears were welling up in his eyes, and she could already tell that crying was going to be inevitable. Orpheus never shied away from any emotion he was feeling, no matter how embarrassing or intense. Eurydice admired him for that, truly. However, she could not say the same for herself, so while Orpheus cried gently into her shoulder, holding her close, she refused to let her own tears fall. She was too used to being guarded. 

She let him cry it out; she had learned that was best for both of them. Orpheus got to fully express his emotions, and Eurydice was able to privately feel hers. When he had subsided into labored breathing, she pulled back from the embrace. Wiping the remaining tears from his eyes, she noted the smile he was trying to push onto his face. 

For once, Eurydice spoke first, “Orpheus, my heart is yours. Always was and always will be. What happened back then? I’ve already forgiven you for it, a thousand times over. I only hope you can do the same for me—"

“I never blamed you, Eurydice,” he said in a rush. They’d had this conversation before, but it had a different weight now, both of them knowing what they did. “I just didn’t understand. I was too preoccupied with my song, with fixing things, to know why you left, but now I do. Please,” he held her face in his hands, “If I ever start to neglect you again, please tell me.”

“I will,” she looked at him intently. “And if I ever, _ever_… make you feel any less loved that you deserve, Orpheus, and you deserve to know every day how much I love you, please, gods, tell me—"

“I will,” Orpheus responded, and with that, Eurydice kissed him hard on the mouth, which served to communicate better how she felt in that moment.

Orpheus responded to the kiss, deepening it, and moving so they faced each other instead of sitting side by side. His hands moved from her shoulders to the small of her back, pressing there to bring her closer to him. She obliged, throwing her arms around his neck as she settled into his lap, thighs framing his waist.

***

Some time later, the lovers lay side by side on the blanket, holding hands under the canopy of trees and sunlight. It was quiet except for the birds and their own steady breathing.

Eurydice turned to Orpheus. “I can’t wait to be your wife, poet.” 

He rotated his body so he was facing her, brought her hand to his lips to kiss it, and said, “I’ve waited my whole life to be your husband, Eurydice. I already love the life we’re about to share.”

Involuntary tears sprang to her eyes for the second time that day. This time, however, they were happy ones, and Eurydice found she hardly minded them at all. 

She rolled across the blanket, hiding her face in his neck and tangling their legs together, waiting for the intensity of her feelings to pass. They stayed like that for a good few minutes, Orpheus’ arms holding Eurydice in place, him occasionally reaching up to stroke her hair.

Sitting up suddenly, she sniffled and tapped his shoulder. “C’mon,” she said, “The market’s still open for another few hours, and we haven’t been shopping in so long, the shelves are forming cobwebs.” She looked to him, her face dropping, “Wait—did you bring the—"

Before she could finish, Orpheus produced a wad of bills from his jean pocket, “I wouldn’t forget something as important as grocery money, would I?” 

_The Orpheus of half a year ago would have_, she thought. But, then again, the Eurydice of half a year ago would never have opened up about her family today, either. She smiled, kissing him quickly on the cheek before taking the money and stuffing it into a small pocket in her vest.

They stood up together, Orpheus slinging his lyre over his back and Eurydice gathering up their blanket and what was left of the contents of their picnic basket. They hadn’t done much eating, she reflected, but there would be time for that later.

“Ready?” She asked, extending her hand for him to hold, as they always did when they went almost anywhere together.

Smiling, he took it immediately. “Ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this was boring idek where it came from lmaooooo
> 
> Eurydice is a forrest nymph/dryad in the original myth. im still working out what that means for the hadestownverse, but i love the concept so!
> 
> as always huge thanks to ao3 user tuppenny who i torture by making her edit these fics. if it wasn't for her this would have been 4,800+ words of total nonsense instead of a digestible 3,900 words of nonsense.
> 
> @passionslipsaway/@dreyfvs on tumblr


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